Ep.38 - A Conversation with Jay Stapley

When do the words Pink Floyd first come up in your memory? It's something that we like to ask whenever we get people on.

In your case, it's a little bit unique.

My dad, in the college holidays, used to have to take on extra work because he had six kids and a mortgage and stuff to do.

And one of the things he did was he taught adult education classes in the local town of Tunbridge Wells, which was full of retired colonels and the last people you would imagine would listen to pop music.

And he started playing them pop music.

And one of the records he used to introduce them to this wonderful world of pop music was Atom Heart Mother.

And that was my first experience of being

Floyd.

Wow, that's quite the first experience, actually.

I was thinking, because you're talking the 60s, I'm thinking, did you hear C. Emily Play or Arnold Lane? But I think Atom Heart Mother is a more apropos introduction to them in some way.

I was born in 1957, so in 1963 I was six years old and I had no real consciousness of popular culture at all.

But of course, when Atom Heart Mother came out, I was 13, 14, 15 and beginning to be aware of what was going on out there.

And then, of course, Dark Side of the Moon came out.

By that time, my musical path had started to become defined.

And my musical path led me more to American music than it did to English music.

So the Stones led me into sort of Graham Parsons and the West Coast country rock arena much more than Pink Floyd and

King Crimson, all those British prog bands.

I wasn't really...

It's the same with Mike Oldfield.

I was kind of aware of Tubular Bells, but I would not say I was a fan.

Right.

I mean, the first time I ever heard Tubular Bells was when I watched The Exorcist for the first time in college.

Just the piano.

And I'm like, what? And I'm thinking, what on earth is this hypnotic thing that I'm listening to? I think I went to a Goodwill a couple of weeks later and lo and behold, in the bin of 45 records was the radio edit of Tubular Bells about, I think, minutes long I want to say and I remember I picked that up and put it on I said wait how long is this thing actually I look it up it's a whole it's it's a whole record and I was like holy shit I couldn't believe music could be that long by then I'd been listening to Pink Floyd and you know Rogers music for a while I knew about Echoes and Adam Harmother but then Tubular Bells it's the whole thing it's a base of what it's both sides of the record if I remember correctly

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